Education ministry to rein in number of doctorates per year

By Wang Pei-lin
and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer

Tue, Oct 09, 2012 - Page 3

The number of doctoral students that universities nationwide can take on each year is to be limited by market demand and corporate needs from now on, the Ministry of Education’s amended Standards for Student Admission Quotas and Resources at Universities and Colleges has said.

According to ministry statistics, 38 percent of total educational resources in 2010 were spent by universities and colleges, but even as national schools produce 80 percent of all doctoral graduates — with 70 percent out of them concentrated in the technology and science sector — research undertaken between 2007 and 2009 into what doctoral graduates were doing one year after graduation showed that between 3.7 percent and 4.8 percent of them were unemployed.

Coupled with figures from the the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics which indicated a jobless rate for doctoral graduates between 2010 and this year at between 2.97 percent and 3.37 percent, it is evident that these graduates are not “in-sync” with the job market upon graduating, the ministry said, adding the highest concentration of unemployed doctoral graduates had specialized in technology and science.

Statistics from the National Science Council for the past four years also showed that between 77 percent and 81 percent of the graduates were in the educational sector, with 10 percent in government and less than 10 percent in private corporations.

There will be no significant change in this trend in the foreseeable future, the council said.

The legislature’s Budget Center assessment of the central government’s budget for next year was critical of the situation, writing that there was an evident gap between employers’ demand for higher-educated personnel and the educational system’s production of them.

The assessment said there was a saturation of technological personnel and a reduced need for those with doctoral degrees, and also wrote that the lack of coordination between state policy and market demands would impact on balanced career development.

Educational polices had not made the obvious and necessary adjustments which caused higher-educated personnel to be heavily concentrated in the educational and governmental sectors, the assessment wrote, adding that it was a waste of thosae resources made available to higher educational facilities.

The ministry amended the standards in August, stipulating that universities and colleges should adjust the number of students accepted each year in accordance with the general educational policy of the state and the developmental needs of society.